7
The Golden Age is Gone
There are days when the girl will gaze out over the western hills and see the man coming down from Garang, a bag on his shoulder, the waning sun dying at his back. But now the clouds are heavy and gray. A hundred meters outside the enclave in the short courtyard grass the wooden blade slams against the side of her head and she falls to her hands and knees. It's against the rules. They're supposed to avoid the head. The crowd jeers and hollers. Her breath comes and goes. She feels like throwing up. She coughs and the things knocked loose inside of her wail in misery. She climbs to her feet and brings her own sword up again, the tip of the swaying blade aimed at the snakehead's eyes, her knees watery, her ears ringing.
The snakehead is bigger, stronger and better. All she has is her speed, but she's slowing down now. Every blow, every cut, every hit and fall takes a bit more out of her, adds weight to her legs and drags her blade. Even in the beginning, when she was quick and fit, he was getting through and connecting and she was not.
She watches his feet. He can't move without his feet. He can't hurt her without his feet.
She watches his feet, watches them slide apart. He lunges forward. She twists right, her body wide. His blade swishes through the air and nearly nicks her nose. He stumbles, off balance now, and she swings her sword up hard into his belly. He doesn't move. It feels a lot like hitting the brick wall of the enclave. He knocks her sword away and hammers his knee into her chest. She crumples to the grass, rattling. The crowd laughs. A real fight would have ended a long, long time ago. She can no longer tell if she is breathing.
See the crowd. They laugh because she picks herself off the ground again and again when she can't even pick up one measly rock. They laugh because she's small and weak and when she talks she talks in a cheap Corellian drawl. They laugh because she's late to make padawan and late to make knight if she ever does make knight. They laugh because she isn't good enough to be a Jedi and she tries too hard and she sits on the roof at night to watch the lights of the lonely grain freight coming to and from Garang and she can't lift one goddamn rock to save her life—
She sticks her hand in the mud and climbs to her feet again. She sees the next blow coming, but seeing is not enough. In a flash her wrist goes numb and then the pain comes. Her sword slips out of her hand and lands in the mud. It's starting to rain. She throws a punch with her left and the bastard doesn't even move. She punches him in the leg. She can barely stand; she's holding onto his leg and leaning hard against him. Suddenly he steps back, and she stumbles forward, and as she is falling she sees a big two-handed drive coming right at her and she closes her eyes.
You bastard, you fucker, you cocksucker. Come on, you shavit son of a bitch. You goddamn greenie bastard. Come on. Come on then.
The blade hits her dead in the gut, lifts her up off her feet. She sees the thunderclouds rolling away. She topples to the ground. Her head snaps back against the mud. This time she does throw up, but she hasn't eaten anything in a day and a half so the wretching is dry. She welcomes it. There is something inside of her and she needs to get it out.
The rain begins to come down thick and fat. The crowd isn't laughing so hard anymore. The rain gets in her eyes. She wipes it away, but it only gets worse, so she stops. Someone asks her if she has had enough. She shoves away the ground with her one good hand and settles into a crouch, picks up her sword with slick, dirty, bloody fingers, takes as deep a breath as she can, then stands up once more, crooked, feeling hell.
Seeing is believing, but seeing is hard. The rain is in her now. Her world is slow. Her sword is slow. The bastard comes again, and her legs are swept out from under her, and she falls forward on her hands and knees. She tries to get back up again when a rocket ship crashes through the back of her skull. Things blur. Things spin. Things run together. It's against the rules. If she ever gets him on the ground, she'll break his head open; she'll smash him in and paint the plains in his brains. She'll kill him.
Stay down, someone says.
She breathes the blood and the mud. Tell me about the sands of your homeworld, motherfucker.
Stay down, someone says.
Stay down. She climbs back up again, barely, to her knees. A slimy green hand hangs in front of her nose, and she grabs it, and is pulled up, up onto her feet, and she's going to be sick again. The snakehead looks down. It's over. His lips move, and his breath comes out in little white puffs. You're done. He holds her good hand, so she hooks him in the ribs with the other, and she thinks that if that hurt him half as much as it hurt her, he might just go down. She lashes out again and whiffs.
The snakehead lets her go, pushes her away, but holds her steady when she begins to fall. Then he turns his back and picks up his wooden sword and trudges through the mud, the blood and the rain, out of the ring of padawans and back down the hill toward the enclave. The others trail behind and slowly follow him in, glancing back every couple of steps. She rocks back and forth in the wind in the grassy field in the middle of the rain, one arm still crooked for a fight, the other sagging. They pass her by, going on in.
Her legs start to shake, so she sits in the mud. She shivers. The rain is cold and hard and it comes straight down. She lies back and closes her eyes. Hears the tapdance of the rain as it tumbles from the sky to pound upon the rough sod of Dantooine. She opens her eyes and the sky is all there is. It's every sky in every universe. She turns her head and looks. He nearly came for her today. If only she had won. He nearly came today. She closes her eyes. She lies in the mud and the flood and the rising tide and floats on out to the sea and the sky and the rain. She can almost see him now. After a while they carry her in.